Gigabyte GA-8VT880 Ultra - Retail VIA Pentium 4 Dual Channel

We have the Intel Prescott supported Gigabyte GA-8VT880 Ultra motherboard under the spotlight today. It is based on VIA's PT880 Dual Channel chipset for the Intel Pentium 4 line of processors. We compare it against Intel's Canterwood chipset.

Dual Channel DDR memory for the Pentium 4, once only dream is now a full blown reality. The technology, first pioneered and introduced by nVidia as revolutionary desktop requirement has fully graduated and been beefed up since then.

Now with 128bit interface and up to and beyond DDR-400 speeds, it's no wonder everyone wanted a piece of the action. With Dual DDR not benefiting AMD Athlon XP anywhere near as much as the Intel Pentium 4, it has taken VIA some time to adopt the Dual Channel standard, in fact, VIA has pushed single channel technology with its so-called Faststream64 technology.

The PT880, which we tested earlier in our Dual Channel DDR chipset roundup for the Pentium 4, we saw VIA put in a great effort for its first Dual Channel chipset. Today we take a look at Gigabyte's adoption of this chipset, the 8VT880 Ultra.